I work during the week and spend my weekends helping my elderly parents with our family farm, and for the past couple weekends I have been dealing with setting up a three-point tiller for our tractor, mostly to till mom's garden and maybe other uses. Again, I work during the week and my parents are retired, and while my dad did have heart surgery last year and has slowed down considerably, he is still capable of doing some work on this... and hasn't.
The big bitch the past two weekends has been the driveshaft, which needed to be assembled and cut to length, which on all accounts is simple enough:
- Fit the thing on the tractor/tiller and see how much overlap there is. (A lot. Couldn't put it on the spline.)
- Take apart the two driveshaft pieces, including the plastic covers on them. (A hassle but no biggie.)
- Measure the excess on the driveshaft halves and cut them off. (Not too much, just need a third of overlap for it to work safely.)
- Measure the excess on the plastic covers and cut them off. (Same length as the driveshaft.)
- Grease the male driveshaft half.
- Put the plastic covers back on.
- Attach complete driveshaft to tractor and till to your heart's desire.
In theory this wouldn't take long. But we don't have a shop, I sleep in on the weekends, it is now July in Colorado where it gets to 80 degrees by 10 in the morning and my dad is one year out from heart surgery so he's walking slow. On top of this, my father is insistent on walking me through every little aspect of this, giving me long drawn-out speeches and history lessons and Why This Is Done This Why and You Need To Be Walked Through This So You Know and making me read through the manual (That we've had for months) multiple times instead of actually just telling me what to do and/or doing the thing or letting me do the thing that needs to be done. And anytime I try to speed up this process, he pisses and moans about me being a speed demon. I have to do light mechanic work for my day job, know what needs to be done and yet he acts like I'm an impatient teenager.
We've made it to Step 4. I say, cut three and a half inches off the plastic cover, the same length as the driveshaft splines. He says, "No!! That's Too Much!! We might expose it!! Let's make it two and three-quarter!! You need to read the manual!!" The manual says, Cut The Same Length Off The Plastic Covers As You Did The Driveshaft.
I've worked with boomers at my dayjob for close to a decade as a seasonal and they are about as slow as my father whose in his mid-70s, but even they weren't as stubborn as him. I was first placed with a guy (One of the best bosses I've ever had) who was reknown for going overboard with getting everything Exactly Right, but even he could complete projects in a timely matter. Other old guys I worked with we're fairly known for taking forever to do basic stuff like hitching up trailers and getting equipment set up on tractors, to the point it was surprising when they got stuff done quickly. It genuinely makes me wonder why my dad is like this.
There was a Twitter post that went around years ago, bitching about how Millennials couldn't or wouldn't do home repair like Boomers could, and most of the replies and quote-tweets pointed out that most home repair stuff Boomers did were poorly done or done in an unsafe manner, on top of the fact that most people my age were (are) still renting and aren't allowed to do home repair per their lease agreements. One that I still remember was someone saying their dad would go, "I'm going to teach your how to work on cars," and just had them hold the flashlight as they silently worked on the car. My dad wasn't this bad, but the slow hand-holding shit mixed with "Why We're Doing This"-isms were always aggravating and unhelpful, and have only gotten worse as he's gotten older and more infirm. I've learned more watching YouTube videos on motorcycle repair and doing work in the mechanic's shop for my day job than I have from him.
Part of this I think is pride. There's an old "Red Green Show" bit, a North of 40 segment, where Red talked about how stopping to ask for directions is an act of personal failure to a man (Keep in mind, this is a 1990s comedy show from Canada) and how if you admit you don't know what you're doing in this instance (Lost on the road) you have to admit you didn't know what you were doing in all other aspects of your life. (Getting Married and Having Kids, per Red.) This is Peak Boomer Humor, but it explains a lot about the Boomer mindset. (I'd say that applies to pretty much anyone in a position of power, political/economic/etc. but that's another essay.) My dad is simply too stubborn to admit he's getting older and slower and doesn't have the energy to be the family man who can fix stuff. But I also think he's way too specific in how he wants things done (Which is a trait I see in myself at times, which makes me nervous I'm going to turn out just like him.) and thinks he knows better. I'm not sure if I can just outright tell him he's getting in his own way at times and needs to let certain things go. ("Do you actually want this done or do you just want it done your way?")
Anyway, he's returned from Popeye's with Sunday Lunch, so I leave you with some Tractor-themed Vaporwave.